bunker mindsets

First day of 'Catastrophic' fire warning across Greater Sydney area. Nobody quite knows what that means, but there's a lot of anxiety about it. It's hot and dry, and with gusty winds, it wouldn't take much for fires to start everywhere.

A lot of schools that border on bushland have opted to close down for the day. Some high schools, some primary. A think a lot of kids who otherwise might have gone to school are being kept home today. Understandably. Trying to evacuate a class or school full of emotional kids would be completely hellish, and far beyond the province of a teacher.

I did some prep: cleaned up yard: tossed out wood scraps, raked and mulched leaves, checked the gutters, set buckets of water all over the garden, ready to put out spot fires if it comes to that.

Nothing might happen. But if something does, better to be prepared, right?

It made me think. We do all this prep for a fire that may or may not turn up; how much more prep should we be doing for a judgement that we hold is definitely coming? Maybe not a bunker mindset, but certainly one that's prepared for whatever is coming.

decriminalisation of abortion passed (maybe?)

Got through the lower house, passed through the upper house, now just needs to be stamped and signed into law back in the lower house.

Now comes the hard part: working out ways to make good options for women who choose the procedure (including the question of access; just because it's decriminalised doesn't mean one can find a local doctor who will want to), as well developing options for those for whom the decision is more complicated than just 'don't want it, get rid of it'.

And yes, I think there should be room for both in the Christian ethos. Helping those at the end of their tether, trapped by their circumstances, and valuing the possibilities of life.

uncomfortable and complicated

Sarah Bessey wrote an essay on the ‘deconversion’ of assorted famous(ish) Christians who've lately made the news. It’s part of her subscribers-only section, and she talks about how she’s tempted to filter their stories of ‘deconversion’ through her own lens of experience, which was to walk away from the faith community she’d begun in - but not to walk away from Jesus, and to rediscover Jesus before finding a community among whom they could worship. In the essay, she acknowledges that this may not be the experience of the people who are confessing their ‘deconversion’, and she can’t cast it in terms of her own experience because she is not them and the experiences that have formed them as people and Christians are not her experiences.

In the last twenty years, I’ve come to understand just how...messy...humanity is. And Christianity with it because the heart of Christianity is all about the heart of humans and the heart of God and how they relate to each other. At this point in life, I feel like there must be nuance because we live in a world of uncomfortable grey zones and life and existence and chaos-entropy-sin gets in the way even as we strive to do the perfectly right thing...

I don’t know if I always succeed.

I do know that I’m not always comfortable with it. I know that my faith is a journey and there are rocky stretches. And I know that insofar as being someone who other people would trust with their faith journeys – as comforter and friend and possibly guide and acolyte – requires me to be more loving than correct – particularly among the groups that I feel more called to minister among: people who have turned their backs on the church and their faith community - and to trust in grace. I like to think of it as a connection that won’t be severed on my end – that’s open for them if they want it to be, that can be a personal connection to Christianity rather than the big amorphous conservative-face-of-Christianity that is mostly depicted in hardline opposition to something. That’s very uncomfortable. And discomfiting. And complicated.

In this, I’m enjoying Pete Enn’s The Sin Of Certainty and Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired to remember that the divinity of God’s revelation can still shine through our flawed humanity, but that we have to be careful about assigning divinity to one category or another of human action.

Yet God has extended grace to me – I don’t have to be right or better or correct – I can just be loving. And sometimes that loving will include words specific to the God who has extended grace to me, and sometimes that loving will involve shutting up and letting care be my words.

Not all answers are neat. A divine God crucified in bloody sacrifice to display the seriousness of our ‘fuck you’ to Him while simultaneously paying the consequences of that ‘fuck you’? Was messy. So, so incredibly messy. And yet God was willing to come and be messy with us in the now.

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Lately I feel very much like I’m not a good fit in Evangelical churches. But I’m pretty sure I’m not a good fit in Pentecostal ones either. And I’m not a good fit in the ‘usual run’ of Uniting churches – more about social good than the good news of God wanting us to be with him. So maybe I’m just not a good fit anywhere in the church?

Does that mean I’m not a good fit for God?

I certainly don’t believe that.

Maybe I’m not the only one who feels this, or maybe it’s a function of my life stage. Maybe this is the swinging pendulum of intimacy and emotion that carries me from feeling like I’m an accepted part of a community to hearing the message of “we don’t like your thoughts here, take them and your questions somewhere else, because we only want righteous certainty here” in the space of six months.

But I'm not willing to let go of God and His word has assured me that He's never going to let go of me so...

I guess it’s the messy and uncomfortable and complicated for me.

An Unpaid Upper Servant

Up to fifty years ago, there are not many stories about women like me.

Single women content to be without a man, childless women who didn’t long for children, working women who aren’t doing menial tasks unpaid, women who have the right to bodily integrity and the laws to demand redress should this be infringed upon (admittedly with likely caveats as ‘dressing modestly’ and ‘being in the right place’ and ‘coming from the right kind of people’)...

The daughters of Zelophehad had to argue for their inheritance before the Law. In the absence of any other testament, should my parents die, the Law will automatically include me in their inheritance. I am accorded the right of inheritance as a bodily heir of my mother and father, and an emotional heir of my stepfather.

How far we’ve come.

And yet how far we could still fall.

There’s an LM Montgomery story in the book Tales Of Avonlea, where a barely-teenaged girl is given her newborn brother by her mother and charged to look after him as the mother dies. The pair are sent to an uncle who resents the pair being dumped upon him but who isn’t willing to turf them out for fear of being seen as unkind to his relatives. They grow up, the sister ‘mothering’ her brother all the way, looking after him, keeping house for him when he grows up. Only...when the brother marries, his wife doesn't want his sister in the house. So the sister goes back to the uncle’s house and takes up a position as ‘an unpaid, upper servant’.

That would have been my lot 100 years ago, even in China: an unmarried woman in a common family would be an unpaid assistant to the married women of the household.

Financial status is not the same as personhood status, but it matters a lot on our capitalist, money-oriented world where the worth of a person is noted down in their earning/productive capacity.

I Kissed Christianity Goodbye

A bruised reed He will not break;
A smouldering wick He will not snuff out.

Do you wonder, sometimes, who you've injured on your journey through life and faith?

I do.

I wonder if there are people for whom my words might have been the last straw; whose smouldering wicks I snuffed out with my thoughtlessness.

The verse "he shall wipe every tear from their eye" has always seemed to me a very poignant indictment on humanity. Because sin is basically the inflicting of tears upon other people through our inability to be wholly holy - set and aligned with God and who we're meant to be.

We may not be bad people, but can we truly say that nobody has ever gone away and wept or grieved or screamed or ached at something we've said to them, something we've done? Because sin isn't just the slaughter of innocents or cheating on your partner, telling your children they're no good, or lying to the tax office...

Sin is also taking our ire from a bad day out on someone else who can't snap back at you.

It's not noticing that the woman who sits across the breakfast table from you is breaking her back to make your life as comfortable as she can and bearing what you can of her burdens.

It's turning your shoulder and hunching away from someone who loves you because you don't feel like responding in that moment.

It's denying someone else the respect or approval or appreciation they've earned, or even the respect and dignity that God views them with.

Why can we see a cluster of cells that have grown for a mere 22 days as more worthy of our time and attention than the bewhiskered, smelly, grim-eyed piece of humanity with the cardboard sign saying, "Lost my job, got turned out of my house, struggling"?

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No, I haven't kissed Christianity goodbye. God willing, I never will.

But I have Questions.

I don't think that's wrong - and it's relieving to know that other people of faith are saying "it's okay to have questions, to shrug and say 'I don't know', to wonder and worry and not be certain.

bricks in the middle of dinner

So, decriminalisation of abortion has passed the House in NSW. It’s likely to pass the Senate.

What happens next, Christians? What’s our next move?

I suspect that the hierarchies (Anglican, Catholic, ACL) will just push for it to be revoked. Just go with the good old ‘Thou Shalt Not Abort’, picketing people who go to doctors, or hospital wings with YOUR BABY IS A PERSON TOO, and declaring women who have had or are contemplating abortions as irrevocably emotionally scarred (with a jolly good side helping of ‘God Can Never Forgive You For Killing Your Baby, Unless You Live In Constant Guilt In Which Case, He Is Merciful And Kind But You’re Still DirtyBadWrong’).

Is this a setback or an opportunity? And when I say ‘opportunity’ I don’t mean an opportunity to preach The Good News Of Abortion Is A Sin And You Just Have To Not Do It; I mean the opportunity to Love Our Neighbour. Are we willing to Love Our Neighbour – and let our fellow Christians love their neighbours without getting in there and Telling Them The Good News Of Abortion Is A Sin?

Example: A Christian friend on FB posted a thoughtful piece about abortion – about the balance between the life of the woman and the possible life of a child, and how society had failed the woman when she felt abortion was the only option. It would be a vastly insufficient statement for the people who are ‘NO QUESTIONS, NO PERSUASION; SHE WANTS, SHE GETS.’ But it wasn’t a screed for public consumption, it was a conversation between this woman and the people who read her FB. And one of her friends responded in the same style of conversation; personal, pointing out that the laws are not just for Christians but for everyone – that the options should be there.

A Christian aquaintance promptly posted a counter-argument, didactic, with a ‘tone’. Said acquaintance is a lovely Christian woman, but...let’s just say she once accused me of trying to make a baby gay by giving him a quilt that had a patch which featured some pink. The conversation wasn’t lost, exactly, but the effect was rather like a brick dropped into a dinner party.

I imagine that well-meaning Christians across NSW are, this morning, happily dropping bricks into dinner parties and thinking they’re doing the Lord’s work.

I don’t want to drop a brick into conversations; I want to find ways to build, IDK, a pizza oven out of the bricks and then invite people around to see my pizza oven, eat the pizzas from it, see how it’s useful. We don’t have to be brick-at-dinner-party people, we can be make-the-pizza-oven-and-invite-people-over people. Obviously, it’s so much easier to drop a brick into a dinner party than it is to build a pizza oven – snappy comebacks on social media are so satisfying, how we love to spit them out! (Prov 18:8) - but I’m pretty sure that the pizza oven will get more people over for dinner and make better connections.

Yes, that’s a really mixed metaphor, but it also illustrates the point: we need to do less brick-dropping and more pizza-oven-building. (Or, you know, BBQ grill building; the BBQ at the house I grew up in was a brick niche near the patio, with a grate over it, and a gap to shove the wood in and shovel the ashes out.)

That’s hard work – planning and building something that’s not immediate and more difficult, with no promise of the brick actually being appreciated (although the whole pizza oven might be admired). But people are much more likely to appreciate bricks with a role and a purpose and in an appropriate context; and in the same way, people are more likely to comprehend Christianity as something worth investigating when they’re not having Christian values shoved in their face but are seeing it as a new and different paradigm to the current worldview. Which, of course, requires us to be willing to develop a different paradigm. When the comes to abortion, it’s one in which the emotional, physical, and fiscal needs of women contemplating abortions are considered as well as the child. Which is what I feel my friend on FB was trying to highlight at the same time as she spoke about abortions and the sadness that they had to take place.

Implementing such a paradigm will cost Christians time and energy and effort with no guarantee of return and (possibly more important to your average Christian) no option to paint ourselves as the morally righteous cruelly and casually rejected by worldly sinners intent on celebrating their sinfulness.

I guess I consider that to be part of the ‘take up your cross’ bit of following Jesus.

it's the little, loving things

I learned last night that a previous minister of our church wouldn't let a couple get confirmed (a number of years ago) because they were living together but not married at the time. The couple is in my bible study and they said that in the country where they come from, they had to be confirmed in order to get married in a church (heavily Catholic country). They're not bitter - more amused - and they serve in the church and are integrated parts of the community which is surely the grace of God at work in their lives.

Still, I sometimes wonder if we let our dogma get in the way of our love. We're more concerned about being 'correct Christians' than 'loving Christians'.

--

What does middle-aged faith look like outside of the 'spinster' box?

What does love look like when you don't let dogma get in the way?

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NSW is trying to get abortion off the criminal code.

This is going about as well as expected.

I think it needs to be non-criminal and legal. BUT I also think we need to provide measures of prevention when it comes to sex (including sex education and contraceptives for both men and women), we need to provide support options for women who don't want to be left carrying the literal baby when the man they're seeing decides to nick off, we need to provide security for women who are in abusive situations and for whom pregnancy is one more fetter, we need to work on our social expecations of women as caregivers and family anchors, and to do all this requires committment and a willingness to put resources towards this that's so much more than just "don't get an abortion!"

Plus, there's a lot of nastiness coming from conservative Christians about this. I just want to tell so many people: "Look, don't @ me regarding 'the other side' - they haven't been called by grace to live lives of love and service in the name of Christ!"

Christians like to talk about how they're loving the world by imposing values on it, but the attitude I see is that most of us would rather be correct than loving. Correct is clean and sterile, it's definitive and certain, it's the logical, rational, proper way to go! Loving is messy and complicated, requires constant maintenance and repair, and might end you up on the Wrong Side Of The Church People...

It's purity culture, the Christian way.

Jesus could be loving and correct; he was God. I suspect us humans will have to make do with being Loving over being Correct. Correct sure feels good on our side, but it mostly sows bitterness in the people we deem Wrong.

small things in the world

Tim Costello (formerly of World Vision, presently of the Centre for Public Christianity): told Christians to calm down and suck it up

A little blunt, but I feel he's not wrong.

Also, he does support freedom of religion - that is, the right of Christian organisations to hire and fire people who don't fall in line with their religious belief systems and the behaviours they feel are in line with that belief.

Mind you, I doubt that anyone will ever lose their job for not tithing to the church, supporting refugees and immigrants, or being openly racist/sexist.

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The Anglican Parish of Gosford has an excellent dissection of the 'religious freedoms bill' and the legalist lines of 'religious freedom' on it's FB page. It largely concerns the legislation that's presently being prospected for opportunity around the national government.

It makes the agile distinction (frequently lost in panicked gospel-pearl clutching of Christian groups) between the right to say you believe what you believe and the disicplines that can be enacted upon one for saying so in a capacity of authority/power/public example.

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I think it's important to make the distinction between 'you can't talk about the gospel (or you'll lose your life)' vs. 'you can't talk about the gospel (or you'll get fined and lose your job)'.

A lot of the situations where Christians explicitly aren't supposed to 'proselytise' (frequently, yes, this translates to 'even mentioning Christianity or the bible as their preferred option') are in dynamics where they have professional power/superiority/authority over the person they're proselytising to. eg. teachers, health professionals, coaches, mamagers, counsellors, government employees with the authority to approvel/withhold civic privileges...

The lack of acknowledgement of the power imbalance is very much the same lack that is seen in white people when it comes to racism, or in men when it comes to sexism. The power differential is not explicit but it is there - in the same way that even a simple "hello" can be a threat by a man to a woman. And that's just the professional power imabalance. Now imagine the weight of a thousand years of dominant religiousity that mostly boiled down to WE CAN CONTROL WHETHER YOUR AFTERLIFE IS AS MISERABLE AS YOUR LIFE HERE IS OR IF YOU GET TO GO TO A BETTER PLACE behind you.

It's like a grown man twisting a seven year old child's arm behind her back and saying "but I'm not using any significant force so it shouldn't hurt". The power imbalance is intrinsic and significant and inescapable.

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With the revelation that Israel Folau's church thinks the doctrine of the trinity is wrong, and believing in it sends you to hell, John Dickson wishes that Christians had treated Izzy's issue with Rugby Australia as a general case of Free Speech, not a special case of The Eeeeeebil World against Christians Saying Anything.

between pious prayer and agnostic activism

It's a bit tough today. It's Sunday, the Lord's Day, and everything's a melange of internal grief and questioning right now.

I live in a conservative stronghold of an electorate. I know most of my friends at church voted LNP (conservative) for "religious freedom" - or the right to say anything biblical and not legally or socially suffer for it - the Israel Folau Stance. My sister says they might care about things like refugee rights on Nauru but they think they can change the mind of the LNP, who've only ever doubled down on internment for asylum seekers.

I trust God and love his people, I just feel like I don't like them much right now. It raises a lot of questions about Christian community and belonging, along with the question whether a single woman of Chinese ancestry, left-leaning and socially progressive is really going to fit in a conservative white family church? No, I don't want your reassurances, Christian friends. Right now, they just feel empty. I like the people - they're very nice people, but very nice people also put the Jews into Dachau, so that's disingenuous. They want to do the right thing by Christians and by the gospel of the Lord, but in suburbia 'the right thing by Christians' means Scripture in schools and not letting people tell children that they don't have to conform to 'male' or 'female' if they feel like they're something else, or educating children about sexualities "too young" (as though every girl being told how pretty she is, while every boy being told how clever he is doesn't emphasise the difference in the way we treat sexuality).

Donating helps in the short-term, but in the long term, it's about policies that the people donating have no power to make, save for at the ballot box, and in letting their representatives know about it in personal emails, written post, or phone calls. And even that stops at the border of our country. Honestly? For most of us it never even gets out of our head - pushed away by busyness or simple selfishness.

Does it feel like all the activists are atheists and agnostics? That the people who care about others who aren't like them are more likely not to be Christians? Along the way, we've learned to give thoughts and prayers and money...but not time and attention and love.

Surely there's somewhere between piously praying and atheistic activism? A middle ground?

Living Next Door To Alice [Part 2]

The second half:

**Australian Better Families – concerned about men’s rights, especially in separated families, re access, child support etc. Lead candidate is a woman, though, who talks about grandparents separated from grandchildren: http://www.newsofthearea.com.au/port-stephens-jewell-drury-stands-for-senate-for-australian-better-families-48660


**Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Fluoridation) Party – Not quite a single-issue party, since they are against both compulsory vaccination and fluoridation of drinking water supplies.


**United Australia Party – this is the party being run (at huge expense) by the abominable Clive Palmer. Enough said. Oh, all right – to spell it out, this is purely a pro-very-big business party, and especially pro-Clive Palmer. In the end, pro-Liberals.


**Democratic Labour Party – This is sneaky! They are reusing an old name, but they aren’t the same party as the old DLP. However, their policies are not dissimilar – socially conservative, strongly anti-left-wing, anti-ALP. Their lead candidate is a western Sydney lawyer (male.)

*Climate Action! Immigration Action! Accountable Politicians! – Micro-party, whose driving idea is to replace parliament with direct online voting on legislation. They don't actually have particular policies for climate or immigration.

**Animal Justice Party – not quite a single-issue party; they have some human-related policies as well as animal ones. Obviously they're against the live-export trade, but also against such things as government support to animal-related farming, the sale of animals as pets (apart from rescue animals) and advertising of animal-derived products like cheese.


**VOTEFLUX.ORG/Upgrade Democracy! – rather like Climate Action! etc, this party wants to abolish parliament in favour of direct online voting on all issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7MCxADcrwE


**Science Party – they want science and technology to lead the way for social and economic development, especially with funding for research (space, driverless cars) and infrastructure (energy, transport, a whole new city to be called Turing). Fairly strong on climate change. Lead candidate Andrea Leong is a microbiologist.


**Citizens Electoral Council – oh, boy! This crowd! Very right-wing. They link to the wild (deceased) Lynton LaRouche, US citizen. Conspiracy theories a specialty – which means sometimes they might get something right, but other times they have theories like “The World Wildlife Fund is a front for Prince Philip to bring in world government” – but it gets wilder yet…


**Sustainable Australia – by sustainable, they include economically environmentally and demographically – they think of themselves as neither right- nor left-wing. They are against a "big Australia" and want reduce immigration, but keep current refugee levels.


**Australian Democrats – the remnants of Don Chipp’s centrist ("keep the bastards honest") party. Policies are middle of the road, and a bit vague in places - very much on the one hand this, but on the other hand that - e.g."strong opposition to any persecution or prejudice... based on race, religion, sexuality or ability" but "stands against any affirmative action bias on the same basis".


**Small Business Party – Not exactly a single issue party, but policies just for a single group – cutting tax, cutting regulations, as far as this will benefit small business. Also advocates (temporarily?) cutting immigration especially to Sydney, on the grounds that there is currently a lack of infrastructure to cope.

Living Next Door To Alice - Pt1 [auspol]

Notes are not mine but from a friend who wonderfully did the research.

It's monstrous! I bet there'll be a character limit on what can go in messages here - so I'll send it in bits, half-a-dozen parties at a time. Here come the first six:

The NSW Senate parties, in the order they appear on the ballot paper

Rise Up Australia Party – led by Danny Nalliah, of Catch the Fire ministries. Particular stated concerns at this election are multiculturalism “kills Australia”, presented as freedom of speech, freedom of religion; you can interpret that pretty well, I think.
(I do like that their lead NSW candidate is a woman who’s a single mother who has worked in a chicken factory. http://riseupaustraliaparty.com/04-maree-nichols/ I wish her well in life, though not electorally.)

Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Party – single issue party, as it says on the box. Their lead candidate is a former (deregistered) doctor, who makes his own cannabis oil and treats patients with it, believing strongly in its medical benefits. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/not-guilty-on-all-charges-an-interview-with-medicinal-cannabis-crusader-dr-andrew-katelaris/

Health Australia Party – a close-to-single-issue party, standing for “natural” medicine, and strongly questioning the medical establishment, including the big pharmaceutical companies, shading off into doubts about the value of vaccination, fluoride etc, though there is no unified party voice on these. Their lead candidate is a herbal medicine practitioner. https://www.biomedica.com.au/page/670/get-to-know-your-community-molly-knight

The Liberal Party and the National Party are grouped together as Group D on the ballot paper, which I think is a bit dodgy but there you go. Their lead candidate is a woman (which is one good thing) and disability support campaigner. A Morrison supporter, of course, as is Andrew Bragg, number two on the ticket – he probably got that spot as a reward for dropping out of the Wentworth preselection race. He was strongly pro same-sex marriage. Third spot is the Nationals, and I bet they’re furious at not getting second spot, because it means they might lose that Senate seat. The first two are fairly safe, I’d think.

Pirate Party – small in Australian terms, but linked to international Pirate Parties. Policies are very strongly related to digital society: non-censorship on the internet, privacy protection, net neutrality, loosening copyright restrictions etc. Other policies are generally in the “progressive” camp, including pro-euthanasia, universal basic income especially for artists (“We will support a basic income guarantee which provides universal support to artists. ”) etc. They are a very secular group, to the extent of being anti-religion, but curiously align with Rise Up Australia in calling for freedom of speech, including what is seen as “hate speech”. (“Advocates of censorship make a fundamental error in assuming that hateful speech is a force which only censorship can defeat.”) Lead candidate is a broadcaster with Radio Skidrow, Marrickville.

Affordable Housing Party – single-issue party with directly related policies: remove negative gearing in investment properties, abolish capital gains discount on housing sales, increase Newstart allowance, restrict overseas housing buyers, tax unoccupied properties. Lead candidate is ex-Greens and formerly with the Sydney Star Observer (a newspaper I don’t know, myself.)

The Greens – multi-issue party, with strong emphasis on the environment, obv – also generally in the “progressive” camp. Great to see how they’ve shifted from minor party to real contender, fielding six candidates – of course if they got more than one in, it’d be a remarkable coup, but they’re out there. Lead candidate is Mehreen Faruqi, first female Muslim Senator in Australia. She may be struggling to get back in.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party - This crowd have done some very adroit renaming – they started as the Shooters and Hunters, then shifted over to being the Shooters and Fishers party (to widen the scope for support, bringing in all those people who like to go fishing on the weekends, and gripe about being limited in their catch sizes) and now are calling themselves Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. It was a clever move, and they have indeed taken votes from the rural sector – votes mostly coming from the National Party base. But what is staying constant? That’s the clue as to what they’re really about - guns.

Australian People’s Party – a bit of a maverick party, on the conservative side with a strong economic-based focus; wants also wants a rise in Newstart and free uni education. Lead candidate stood in the Wentworth by-election, and preferenced Kerryn Phelps way down, vs (for example) Katter’s Australia Party way up.

Labor Party – well, you know this lot already! Lead candidates are Tony Sheldon (speaks about wages, sounding the alarm on the gig economy, ex-Transport Workers Union – right wing of ALP) Tim Ayres (ex-AMWU, left wing of ALP). In third (unlikely to get up) place – Jason Yat-Sen Li, who ran for the Senate about twenty years ago, for the pro-multicultural Unity Party. This group includes Country Labor, who therefore take last place on the ticket and have an even worse chance of getting up.

Socialist Alliance – Left-wing, revolutionary socialist, the group who put out the newspapers Green Left Weekly and Resistance. Their lead candidate is co-editor of the latter. Very quick to jump to the most left position of any debate, and to judge causes quickly.

The Together Party – Only standing in NSW, this is a micro-party – they want protection for the ABC, no privatisation of public services and a national Independent Commission Against Corruption. It’s mostly Mark Swivel, their lead candidate – lawyer, occasional author and performer. He has been involved in legal aid and microfinance for developing countries.


**Australian Conservatives – set up by Cory Bernardi, who left the Liberals because they were too left-wing. Pro free-market, anti-Paris climate change agreement, anti-UN convention on refugees, etc. When I said there were people who would never get my vote…


**Great Australian Party – set up by Rod Cullerton, formerly of One Nation, but left to make his own career not resiling from former positions but now specialising in opposing income tax. Right-wing, goes without saying.


**FRASER ANNING’S CONSERVATIVE NATIONAL PARTY – Oh, boy, all of these in a row! Clever move to register the name all in capitals – it might get them a bit more attention, but in general – this is just one more astonishingly hate-filled party. Neonazi and plainly racist links.


**Christian Democratic Party – Old-school social conservative – do you know Fred Nile? This is his team. Anti-abortion, generally socially conservative.


**Independents for Climate Action Now - newly-founded hopeful party, declaring that climate change is a problem beyond left- or right-wing politics, and can be tackled by various policies. https://i-c-a-n.com.au/
Their lead candidate is an Anglican priest who’s been active against offshore detention policies, but the focus of the party is purely on environment/climate change.


**Liberal Democrats – Rightwing. One of their founders was David Leyjonhelm, who told Sarah Hanson-Young to “stop shagging men” in response to her speech in parliament re: rape. His former chief of staff is now their lead candidate, and is calling for cutting taxes and “ending the nanny state”.

**Pauline Hanson’s One Nation – I think you know this crowd already!


**The Women’s Party – not exactly a single-issue party, because they want action on domestic violence as well as more representation of women in parliament and wage inequality.


**Seniors United Party of Australia – anti-Labor on the franking credits reform, wants more funding for aged care.


**Socialist Equality Party – Far left, Trotskyist, and in Australian terms "Spartacist". Strong on social inequality, re-emergence of fascism. Want abolition of capitalism, and installation of socialist governments. Lead candidate is a longterm activist who has published lots of analysis such as this about Anzac Day - https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/04/awar-m04.html


**Australian Workers Party – leftist, unionist, wants essential services in public not private hands. Policies a little undeveloped, but they pledge to decide every issue on whether something will "benefit the working people of this nation".

Part 2

Paul and the people

A while back, I posted a comment in the feed of an Australian Christian author whose views I respect, and who comes down more on the ‘practical, out-there love’ side of things than the ‘theologically correct’ side. The comment was about how the Apostle Paul challenged the people around him with the news of Jesus Christ, but he did so either in a relational context (working among, living among, breaking bread with), or else in a context that was geared for actual philosophical debate and the exchange of ideas(such as the Areopagus).

He didn’t run into the temples or places of worship and desecrate them.

He didn’t stand at the roadside and bellow ‘you are all sinners!’

Paul argued with people, yes, but he did so with his life as backup – for weeks, perhaps months, perhaps years on end. Mending sails, sitting by the wharves, doubtless chatting with people who had questions, teaching and preaching when he could, seizing moments in the synagogues when he could persuade the leaders to listen to him. You can imagine him with Jesus’ love and mercy and grace weighing on him every moment, but knowing that he couldn’t just lecture someone about ‘sin’ (a concept probably as foreign to the ancients as it tends to be in our modern world) because he knew all the theology and doctrine but it took the divine revelation of the risen Christ to kick him out of doctrine and into the living, loving faith.

In the last month, there was a guy (an American) who stepped onto a train in Sydney and started preaching about the evils of abortion. He didn't have a relationship with anyone on that train. He didn't know anything about any of those people. He just walked in and started preaching and claimed he was doing it out of 'love' for these people. No, he wasn't. He was doing it out of love for himself and the sound of his voice.

In the last two weeks, Israel Folau - a rugby league player who'd already been cautioned about expression hardline views about homosexuality and agreed to keep his mouth shut on his beliefs - spouted off the bible verse about "neither idolators nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor liars...will enter the kingdom of God". Which went down about as well as one would expect given that he'd already been cautioned about it and agreed not to stir the pot again.

I am minded of James: Let your yes mean yes, and your no, no.

A lot of modern Christians are on board with public expressions of Christianity and are outraged when they're not received as well as we'd like.

I'm not convinced we've given the public any reason to like us - or, more correctly, we've given the public no reason to listen to us. Which is to say, we've shown them no real expression of love or concern for their concerns - not the way Paul did, not the way Jesus did. We've given them no reason to listen to us; no reason to care if what we say is the truth. And maybe that's post-modernism having it's wicked way with our minds, but it's also a relational thing. We will listen to things we disagree with from people we like, who we feel have our feelings and best interests in mind, where we wouldn't take it from a stranger.

"What the church wants" is frequently held to be irrelevant these days; the immediate response from Christians tends to be "but we shouldn't just give way to the world and its view!" No, we shouldn't. But if the people who are part of 'the world' don't feel we love them, care about them, have any thought or concern for the thoughts or concerns that plague them, then why would they bother listening to us, even if we think we have the best news in the world?

I suspect the people Paul wrote letters to and preached to knew how much he cared for them. Sure and the people Jesus healed knew he saw them as people, not just as converts to the good news.

Do we see people as people first? Do I?

a tenth of rue and dill and rosemary...[old post from drafts]

Two instagram posts by Jen Hatmaker:

Last night, a post of
1. exasperation and frustration

Me, facing the full moon tonight, talking to God: “Jesus, I am wild about you and I really just want to love your people, but I fully hate at least half of them.” So that is where I am this evening. I hope Jesus is #blessed by my capacity.

followed by this morning's post:

2. thankfulness for mercy:

His mercies are new every morning!
.
THANK GOD, omg (literally). New day. New chance. New start. New slate. Yesterday is over. (Again, THANK GOD.)

Needless to say a lot of the responses to post #1 were rebuking her for using the word 'hate'.

I wonder how many of them think that taking kids away from their parents is justified. Because crossing the border is 'breaking the law'.